May 20, 2009

You don’t exist

When the world looks at Germany, Germany shows sorrow and regret for her past. The Nazi past, and wants to promise to herself and those willing to listen, that we Germans won’t forget so that our history can’t repeat itself.
Not mentioning that German history has never actually stopped repeating itself. The concept of an Aryan race is still on a not so subtle level in most white German’s mind-set. The belief that somebody who is not white also can’t be German, ‘must be’ a foreigner and is therefore nobody of ‘us’.
In the white German mind-set Germans of Color don’t exist. And with this also not their history. The stereotypes are that people of Asian descent are either Chinese who own a restaurant or are Japanese tourists. People of middle east descent are Turkish who refuse to integrate and Black people are African illegal immigrants. All ‘foreigners’ only come to Germany to benefit from our welfare system. [Stereotypes summarized].
The fear of Überfremdung (too many foreigners) are wide-spread, many white Germans believe that problems are caused by foreigners or that difficulties People of Color face in Germany are caused by themselves (because they allegedly don’t integrate).
White German anti-racism does little to reject these ideas, the concept of ‘white privilege’ etc. is quite unknown also among them, racism is considered a problem of “the right”, institutionalized racism hardly exists in their mind-set and anti-racism is for many a synonym to fight pro immigrant’s rights.

But regardless how much we white Germans as a collective try to ignore People of Color as citizens and part of our history, they exist and are starting to tell their history as well as their experiences in Germany.
I think the internet is a great opportunity to undermine Germans effort to silence some Germans, the more people know that they exist the harder it becomes for Germany to ignore them and their human rights.